


Plans, as usual

by Rhyolite



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Gen, Reflection, mentions of anaanderfication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 13:13:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13236459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhyolite/pseuds/Rhyolite
Summary: Anaander Mianaai drinks tea, muses on history, and makes plans, her ability to do so being only slightly impeded by the fact that she is currently five.





	Plans, as usual

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Drunk History: Birth of the Imperial Radch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5893840) by [Eccentric_Hat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eccentric_Hat/pseuds/Eccentric_Hat). 



She needed to think, to plan what was going to happen next. Usually, she would be able to divert the need to another instance, have that instance ponder situations and strategies and outcomes, but with the communications still blocked (thanks to the other, not-her part of her) she had to make do with only one too young body. She pushed back her chair, more clumsily than she should have (this instance was only five, and thus it was clumsier than the older instances she used in public spaces. Usually used in public spaces. Also, the chairs seemed bigger.)

“Citizens,” she said carefully, “There are other matters that require my attention. I will be able to continue this meeting with you later, if what we have spoken about has not solved the problems you were experiencing.” A nicety: they had spoken for two hours, and what they had not said could be solved without her assistance.

The three citizens she had been meeting with acquiesced, bowed before leaving, half empty bowls of cooling tea on the table behind them. She nodded in response to their bows; only what was due to a member of a house lower ranking to her own, nothing more. The many pins on her jacket clicked together softly. (The last time she had nodded or bowed deeply than that nod was when this part of her was leaving the Radch and the part of her that had opposed expanding Radchaai territory was stayed behind, pure and holy, not contaminated by the uncivilized, in the Dyson sphere. That had been awkward, never mind that the other instance of her had done the same. She wondered now if she should have held the small war that had brought that about in her mind more firmly and, if she had, whether she would have avoided the current situation.)

No matter. What was done was done. The omens had fallen how Amaat had willed them to fall. Fighting with herself over whether she should leave the Radch until she had a frighteningly few number of bodies left, and then splitting herself so that she could do both was a decision that had been made, and could not be unmade.

She took one of the back ways into her palace, stopping to whisper with a ten-year-old instance about the citizens who had been meeting with her, and carefully avoiding the room in which she—and the other, not-her her—had met the remaining  _Justice of Toren_  ancillary and Seivarden Vendaai. The room had been cleaned, by more instances of herself—she didn’t trust many besides herself into the heart of her palace, more now than ever—and was no longer impure, but she was reluctant to enter that  _particular_  room now. The reluctance stemmed mostly from this instance, she thought, but it wasn’t a vital area of her palace. She could avoid it for now, and use it once this situation settled down; as it would.

Instead, she wandered through the rooms where this instance had spent the last five years, ignoring the _wrongness_ of the empty echoes of her footsteps. These rooms shouldn’t be empty. They should be full of her younger bodies, learning to read, to process the endless data she sent back here and to her other palaces. There should be teenaged instances earnestly writing bad poetry, and older instances determinedly ignoring that same poetry. Too many instances had been killed while this one was watching, or gone missing; probably killed. She only had this one brain’s memories to use now, so she wasn’t sure.

She had never had much trouble with her younger instances. She pushed them to the back of her mind, once they were old enough to be hooked up but not have their own sense of self yet. She had maintained a sort of _gap_ between the older instances that she found most comfortable and her younger ones. Not a split, not like the one she had experienced when she left the Radch, and the one now, but enough distance so that she could easily ignore them if she needed to but still make use of their neuroplasticity. That distance was gone now: all she had _left_ here at Omaugh were the younger instances that had been in the heart of her palace, none of them older than thirteen.

Suddenly she felt that she needed to move away from here, to be somewhere else. Somewhere that held, if not less memories, then less of a sense of loss and emptiness. She walked, faster than propriety would normally dictate, to the gardens that surrounded her palace. She knew the acres of gardens well, and knew the places that no one—besides herself—would think to look. Like the small building near the irises that had been inhabited by a—now dead—horticulturist that she had trusted more than the others. For that reason, she had allowed the horticulturist to work with the irises and orchids, and had been instructed to only consult Anaander if she was planning to change something drastic about her corner of the grounds. The building was disguised cleverly: someone who didn’t know about it would only see a small manicured hill planted with irises.

The horticulturist had left an orchid surrounded with gardening tools on the table in her workspace. Anaander swept the tools to one side, brewed herself a cup of tea from the dead horticulturist’s allowance. Staring at the purple blossom, she sipped the tea. It wasn’t the type she preferred: it tasted strongly of mint and was not of the quality that Anaander usually drank, but it helped calm her. It tasted like the tea that the other her-- the one that had stayed in the Radch-- would drink now.

The events of the last two days had been unexpected. She had half expected Seivarden Vendaai to be dead by now, not in the company of, and apparently employed by, an ancillary of  _Justice of Toren._  The ancillary would be either a problem or an ally, from now on. Its determination and anger, if channeled into something that would benefit Anaander and thus the Radchaai, could be helpful in her no-longer-secret war with herself.

She swung her legs on the chair, a nervous habit, but a better one than the _revolting_ habit of sucking on one’s thumb that some of the youngest instances had acquired in the past two days. The ancillary would want to do something about the sister of its favorite, she mused, and it wouldn’t take any other orders or instructions from her. She sipped her tea. It had gone cold. She frowned. She could try to keep it imprisoned here until she found something to do with it once it woke up, but that course of action, she decided, was little better than procrastinating and letting it do what it wished. The war she had fought with herself, delaying her departure from the Radch for fifty years had been, in part, an exercise in procrastination and indecision. She would prevent that from happening again.

The thought of giving it a ship and sending it to where the late Lieutenant Elming’s sister lived drifted across her mind. At first, it seemed foolish, but it gradually gained rationality as she considered. She could see, through whatever ship she sent it with, what part of herself controlled the station (ever since the comms had gone down she had no way of knowing, and before they’d been shut off she wouldn’t have cared to find out), and she could find a way to control the station and its residents.

How, though, was she to keep an eye on it in gate-space? She moved the orchid and brewed another cup of tea, just as the in-station communications had turned back on. A flood of data—from her other instances here, none older than thirteen—hit her like a wave. She rode it out (she had practice from when each of her instances exited gate-space), closed her eyes, sorted the data, and the solution occurred to her. All of her, not just this one five-year-old instance.

A quick query of Station gave her the results she was looking for: the baby lieutenants in the system. She chose one. Lieutenant Tisarwat, aged seventeen, just out of training for Administration.  _Perfect._ She would let the ancillary choose two officers, and have Tisarwat be the third with the excuse that the ancillary could train her how it liked.

Anaander Mianaai strode out of the hut to prepare for the next step in her plan. She also extracted herself from a meeting with Station Security and began to walk to the temporary quarters Lieutenant Tisarwat was currently residing in. At the same time, her oldest instance here—who was about thirteen, began to layout the tools and implants she would need. A younger instance assisted her, fetching the meds that the baby lieutenant would need after she was hooked up. The same instance would assist the older one if she needed help with the procedure as well. Every one of her instances on the station smiled, pleased with herself. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make me super happy. <3


End file.
